I found Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickled and Dimed” a fascinating portrait of low-wage labor culture in the U.S. She traveled to three cities in the U.S. where she took jobs at low wages to see whether or not she could make ends meet. Her accounts of jobs as a housekeeper and working in retail at Wal-Mart are insightful and compelling portraits of the shortcomings of the U.S. economic system.